Quebec: We Don't Want More Haitians.

No one can deny that Quebeckers have been the most generous Canadian donors in relation to money raised for Haitian relief. In fact, the Quebec telethon in support of Haitian relief was more than twice as successful in terms of per capita donations as compared to that of the Canadian effort.

It's quite understandable, the Canadian Haitian community is almost exclusively a Quebec affair, as more than 90% of them live in Quebec and even more specifically, Montreal. Because of this close relationship there is a strong desire to help the earthquake ravaged island.

That being said, there are voices in Quebec, growing louder and louder, that are demanding that immigration from the stricken island be limited to family reunification (including orphans) only, and that the disaster not spark any sort of mass immigration.

Here's a particularly nasty article (in French) concerning this very question entitled "Non à l’immigration haïtienne"

Interestingly, Ottawa has seemed to back up that point of view, declaring that they won't loosen rules that would expand the definition of 'family' to include a wider circle of eligible immigrants.

The Feds remain sensitive to the fact that if they allow an influx of Haitians, they will end up in Montreal and it would quite rightly be an intrusion into Quebec's sphere of responsibility.

Canada and Quebec have had immigration agreements since 1971, but in 1978 the "Cullen-Couture Agreement" gave Quebec the absolute right to select it's own immigrants under it's own criteria.

Ever since then, the most important criterion to becoming a Quebec immigrant was the ability to speak French. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of Frenchman and Belgians who wished to come to Quebec. Of those who did, many returned home, citing discrimination (if you can believe it!). Suffice to say, there's no love loss between Quebeckers and Frenchmen from Europe.

And so Quebec was left with the choice of seeking immigrants from Haiti, various African banana republics and from the Arab countries that had a French colonial past, including Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria (known collectively as the "Mahgreb,") as well as Lebanon.

Most of these immigrants moved to Quebec with little understanding of democracy or modern western beliefs. They were poorly educated and few had skills that could be put to use in modern society.
To the utter frustration of Quebeckers of all stripes, the immigrants failed to integrate into mainstream society and insisted on maintaining their customs, religion and traditions and worst of all- their apartness.

Notwithstanding that the immigrants spoke French and were absorbed onto the French side of the English/French divide, they largely remained apart and disconnected from mainstream society.As in the case of Europe, they have settled into ghettos and created their own little home away from home, or country within a country.

While immigrants claim that their failure to succeed is based on unequal opportunity and discrimination, most Quebeckers believe that the problem is the immigrants failure to adapt to the realities of modern Quebec.

Quebeckers have also largely come to believe that it is they who are slowly being assimilated, instead of the immigrants.

The disillusionment over the immigration influx, is reinforced by alarmist news reports indicating that certain districts of Montreal are out of control and under the influence of immigrant street gangs. Coupled with Arab immigrants refusal to give up their veil and religious orthodoxy in the name of Quebec secularism, a clash of culture seems to be brewing.

Many are calling for a moratorium on immigration, lest Quebec turn into Holland or France, where ethnic and religious conflict has exploded with increased immigration.

Positions are no doubt hardening and the concept of 'Reasonable Accommodations" (the policy of making cultural allowances for immigrants) is all but dead, whether the politicians realize it or not.

Quebeckers are taking a serious look at the benefits versus the cost of immigration, with the tide turning decidedly against a policy of open doors.

And so, immigration is the new hot topic in Quebec. The issue transcends traditional linguistic and language alignments and is explosive on so many different levels because many see it as the defining element of a future Quebec.
More next week.....